How to talk about public holidays and festivals in English

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi and welcome to the 3 English Experts. I'm Birgit. I'm Dave. And I'm Rebecca. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Okay, everybody, welcome back to this episode. Today we are going to talk about holidays, so national holidays, public holidays, typical ones that we have in Germany here, other ones that are from the UK, and the differences and the different names of these days, how to talk about what happens on these days, etc, etc. So today, this episode is going to come out, or will be out on April the 21st, which is a special day, isn't it, Birgit? Oh, yes. It's my birthday. It's going to be, or it will be, Birgit's birthday when this comes out. So can I already say now in advance, am I allowed to say the words or not? No, no way. Oh, yeah, go on. Really? No, you can't. It's not allowed. It's not allowed. It's bad luck, I think, if you congratulate beforehand. Do you do that in England? We kind of do, don't we, Dave? I would, if I'm not going to see someone, yeah, I would say, happy birthday for tomorrow. So if it was a Friday, and I knew it was your birthday tomorrow, and I knew maybe I wasn't going to see you, oh, well, happy birthday for Monday, or you can do it in advance. I wouldn't do it like a month in advance. You can do it now. That's a bit too much, but I would do, yeah, I would say, happy birthday, or have a great birthday tomorrow. I don't know, the Germans look at you like, you can't do that. Yes, exactly, too early. Too early, yes. Yeah, but it's a special day this year also, because it will be Easter Monday. Oh, so you've got a day off. My birthday will be, or is, on Easter Monday at Easter. So that's a prepositional issue. You say, at Christmas, at Easter, but if you name the day, you have to say, on Easter Monday, on Christmas Day. A couple of things there, Rebecca. What do we normally say in English that often people don't know about when it's a happy birthday? I mean, of course, you say, happy birthday. What are the phrases, we talked about it earlier on, what are the phrases do we use in English for a happy birthday? Yeah, so you can say, obviously, wishing you a happy birthday. We don't really say, congratulations. The Germans often say to me, oh, congratulations. To me, congratulations is more when I've achieved something, or you've got married, or you had a baby, or you've passed an exam. When you get married, is it congratulations when you get married? I thought it was commiserations. Is your wife listening to this day? It's congratulations on that you married such an amazing person. That's the congratulations. Yeah, so we don't really say that for birthday. We would say, wishing you a happy birthday. We also have this phrase, many happy returns. Exactly. Oh, that's a good one. You can say that, or you can also write that in a card, many happy returns of the day, meaning hopefully you'll have many more birthdays in the future. That's quite common. That's a good one. Yeah, people don't always know that one. And if it's a day late or two, what do we say then? Oh, yes. Right. Bigot, it's late. No, not belated. Yeah, yeah, right. Belated, belated birthday wishes. Exactly, belated birthday greetings or birthday wishes. Belated, yeah. Happy birthday belatedly, yeah, yeah. Yes. Okay. And Easter, sorry for interrupting, Rebecca, but Easter, that's also a big one, isn't it? With the people actually saying Eastern with an N at the end. That's a common mistake. Happy Easter, yeah, Easter. You get the N on the end, which it's not the Eastern and the Western. It's just Easter with an R, yes. It's not a direction. Yes, you do hear that. And Bigot, so on that day, Monday the 21st, will you be drinking some champagne or will you be eating good food or what's going to happen? I haven't decided yet, but definitely I will be having a little drink, I think, or a glass of wine. I don't know about champagne, after a long Lent session, so starting after Carnival I will not be drinking alcohol and trying to cut down on sweets. And that's the usual Lent fasting period, yeah. Which we also have. I mean, we have this fasting period. Not everybody does that, of course, but we call it Lent. It's getting rarer, I think, isn't it, this Lent idea? I think it's getting more, I think, and becoming more popular, yeah. I don't know. We have dry January, you know, we like stop drinking. I don't know. We've created dry January and we've forgotten about Lent. I don't know. I'm sure some people still do that. And we've talked about this before. We have Pancake Day. So Fasching-Dienstag, the last day of Carnival in Germany, is actually what we have is Pancake Day, so Strove Tuesday, which is when you eat all the sweet stuff officially before the start of Lent. And then you eat the chocolate again on, you know, Easter Sunday. Officially, yes. Ah, okay. And you go with the Easter eggs. Yes. Not the rabbit? Not really. I'm sure there are some chocolate rabbits, but we generally eat eggs, big chocolate Easter eggs. Although I'm completely obsessed with these mini Malteser chocolate rabbits. Oh my goodness. When it's rabbit season, there's trouble. I don't even know them. Oh, they're so good. I have to get you some bigger. When my parents come, my brother comes to the UK, they bring me the chocolate rabbits and there's just packages everywhere because they're just, they're kind of mini and they're so good. Okay. So do you go on an egg hunt then on a, on the Sunday, Easter Sunday? I don't think we used to do that. Did we? I think little children, you would, you would have the little baskets and search for eggs. Yeah. You search for eggs. Okay. We also have this weird egg rolling thing where, I don't know if this is a Sheffield thing. Oh yeah. Did you do that Dave? Yeah. Well, we, I don't know. We used to have a, an egg and spoon race as well. Like one of the school sports day things. You had an egg, egg and spoon. You had to run with an egg bounce on your spoon. Yeah. I think that's got nothing to do with Easter. That was something where we decorated. I remember this as kids, you directly decorated your egg and then you had to roll it down a hill, which in Sheffield is very easy because there's lots of hills in Sheffield. They call it the Rome of England, you know? Yes. That's where, the hills is where it ends. That's the only common point. Yeah. And we rolled these eggs down the hill and then it was like, whose egg got to the bottom quickest? I think. Don't ask. There's some strange, bizarre English weird. There's a lot of really weird sort of competition. It's off topic. I know, but there's that one with the cheese where they roll the cheese down. It's about rolling. Or people even rolling down hills. Yes. Off topic. Okay. Moving on from Easter. Okay. But I just remember because we didn't talk about that. Do you colour boiled eggs for Easter Sunday? I mean, that's our tradition. You, you, you know that. So, but that you would, would you do that in England? Yeah. And I think kids at school and stuff, they would decorate eggs. But I think, I think it's a bigger thing here. This whole. It's bigger, yeah. You would decorate your house bigger, right? For Easter. Yes, definitely. And the bush in front of the house. Yeah. You see, I don't think people at home do that. I don't think they would. I always see that here in Germany that people got these nice, you know, eggs all over the trees outside or the bushes. And we don't really do that. But the shops miss out on business in England. Absolutely, yeah. It's a good, good idea. Yeah, yeah. So shop listeners. Yeah. Okay. So, and then in May, well, that's a little heap. Kleiner Sprung forward. We have a lot of holidays, many holidays. David has got a list, I think. Yeah. I always forget what, which way round they are. This is one of the, where they all come together. And I always get confused which one's which, between English and German and German and English, whichever, which comes first. But anyway, you have the May Day, don't you? Everyone, I think, knows that, 1st of May. And then you have what we call Ascension Day. So that's the day where Jesus ascended into heaven. Correct me if I'm wrong. Well, it seems like, yeah, I think so, yeah. Because you have the ascend, right? Yeah, ascending, yeah, yeah. Right. And then we have Whitsun Tide. But I believe the Americans call it Pentecost. So that's where. Fingston. Fingston, right. Yeah, Whitsun. We say Whitsun or Whitsun Tide, usually both, I guess. And then moving on, I think it's into, is this already June? I think often it's June, yeah, Corpus Christi, yeah. Corpus Christi, yeah, Corpus Christi. And yeah, they're the main ones in that sort of bank holiday marathon. But we don't have those. We don't have Corpus Christi. We don't have Ascension Day. They're not holidays in the UK. So Fingston, Whitsun, we do have Whit Monday. But we don't actually have, they exist, but we don't have them as holidays. They're not national holidays, Ascension Day, Corpus Christi. And that's also a big point with the Monday, isn't it, Rebecca? Because it's the same here as in Britain as in the States. But most bank holidays, even if they were to fall on any other day, are put on a Monday so that we get the long weekend. And so when Germans try to explain, for example, when the bank holiday is on a Thursday, and then they have the Friday off, and then they talk about this Brückentag, it doesn't exist in English. So you can say- Nobody really knows what you're talking about. You can say bridge day until the cows come home, and everyone just scratches their head. Why is it bridge day? It's such a good way. I use it because it kind of makes sense. But they use it in Spain, though. They use it in Spain. They have the Puente. They have the bridge day. They also use that. Okay. I'm pretty sure they, I'm quite sure they have the Puente. So do you feel we have more bank holidays and holidays than in England? You guys never work. Yes, I think- You never work in Germany. In May and June, there's a lot. But I think the problem is, for example, May the 1st. If in Germany, it's on a Saturday, then you lose the day. Whereas for us, we always have the first Monday in May is May Day. So that's quite good. Also, Christmas. If Christmas falls on a Saturday and Sunday, we get Monday, Tuesday off. And the Germans- You do? Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's actually pretty good. So I think in Germany- Oh, wow. Germans do get more. Anybody listening from the government? Yeah, it's a good idea, isn't it? I think the Germans get more. But if they fall on the wrong time, you know, if you end up with May Day on a Saturday and Christmas 25th is a Sunday or something, it's pretty bad. It can be quite bad. So it kind of- Yeah, I've often thought they should space them out a bit more. I mean, obviously, it's based on religion. I know that. But wouldn't it be nice if you had one or two every month? Yes, absolutely. And then there's nothing. In Germany, it's like June and then there's nothing until October, which is very long, you know. And we have August Bank holiday. We have different ones. August Bank holiday? What's that? It's just a holiday. We just made them up. We don't even put them with religion anymore. We just make them up because people need a day off, you know. Oh, wonderful. Well, we have school break if you have children, obviously, after June, Rebecca, then. Yeah, but you're not off all that time if you have a job, even if you've got kids, you know. True. You need a holiday sometimes. You do, yeah. But it's quite interesting making bank holidays up for nothing. I mean, I don't know. In Ireland, it's not for nothing, of course. But in Ireland, they have St Patrick's Day, right, in March. Did you just say that St Patrick's Day is for nothing? No, I'm saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know what I mean? But because you have these patron saints, you have the patron saints of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But are they actually, is it a bank holiday in Ireland? In Ireland, it is a bank holiday. It is a holiday, yeah. So the 17th of March is always a day off. 17th of March, okay. Yes, and I think also if that falls on a Saturday, I think it's also the Monday then is the holiday. So it's always. Oh, yeah, okay. And they've just recently introduced St Bridget's Day, which is in February, because they just decided they needed another one. So they've got a female saint now. And that's sometimes in February is another holiday that they've just introduced. So they've got an extra day now. That's cool. And I know, I know guys that in England, shops will be open on a bank holiday, right? Often. Often. You can go shopping, do your shopping. It depends from shop to shop. But a lot of them will be open, maybe not the full day, maybe only from like 10 till four or something, bank holiday hours. But Sundays, bank holidays, the shops are. But the weird thing on Sundays, right, Rebecca, correct me if I'm wrong, is they can't, actually, you can go into a shop, but you can't pay until a certain time. And then I think it closes around four on Sunday. Yeah, I don't really know any more about this. What times things can and can you buy alcohol? There was a thing where you used to like cover up the alcohol on a Sunday. But I don't know if that's still, we've lived away so long, Dave. We don't know. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think there's something about you can't actually pay for anything in a shop before it would be the time of the churches finishing their session. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. And Rebecca, you said something interesting. If you can't buy alcohol, you can still buy it at the airport. So that's this funny Irish thing that Good Friday, which is... Oh, wait, I have to come back to Easter. Yeah, we're going back to Easter. So Good Friday. So Carfreitag, I think, was one of the only days in Ireland where pubs are closed. I think it's Good Friday, not, yeah, I don't think it's... And also, yeah, shops and anywhere selling alcohol. So they had this weird rule that airports and train stations were still allowed to sell alcohol. So we had this situation in Ireland where you get thousands of people going to the train station and the airport, even though they weren't going anywhere, to have a pint of Guinness. I think that has changed now. Yeah, I was once sitting at Kerry Airport on Good Friday. It's a tiny little airport in the west of Ireland. And we came into the bar and I was like, wow, it's heaving in here. There are so many people. It was like 10 o'clock in the morning. And we were like, why is everybody... 10 o'clock in the morning? And then suddenly my husband was like, oh, it's Good Friday. Yes, it was really strange. I think they might have changed that. Meanwhile, I'm not completely sure, but that was... Then you get people buying train tickets to nowhere, like one station, because you had to have a ticket to get onto the platform to buy your Guinness. And yeah, super. Yeah, very creative. Different traditions. Yeah, but on the list going further into the year towards the end, so we have German Unification Day. 3rd of October. All Saints Day. Now, this is where the Halloween thing comes in. So a lot of people think, a lot of Germans I find, they think that Halloween is American, which it isn't. It's originally a Celtic festival. And it's also a holiday in Ireland. So Halloween, the 31st of October is a holiday in Ireland as well, because it's an Irish festival. And quick explanation, 2,000 years ago, I think already it was celebrated as a Celtic festival. And it was actually the end of the Celtic year. So I think it's actually New Year's Eve. It's like New Year's Eve for the Celtic year. And it was originally called Samhain. I think I'm pronouncing that right. And it was this celebration of the sort of change between good and bad and the new year. And there was all the evil fairies basically came out and you had to leave food out. And that's why you leave pumpkins and things in front of your house. Food from the festival, from the harvest to make the fairies happy. Otherwise, bad things happen. So I don't know, your cows would die or whatever. And this is before the church arrived in Ireland. This is before the Catholic church arrived in Ireland. And of course, when they arrived, they weren't very happy with this pagan festival about fairies and evil spirits and all this kind of stuff. So the story is that they introduced Alla Heiligen, so All Hallows Day, which is the 1st of November. And Halloween is All Hallows Evening, basically. So Halloween, like Hallows Evening, which is the night before. So it became Halloween. And then a lot of Irish then went across to the States, immigration and took Halloween with them. So of course, the Americans made it big and Hollywood and all kind of commercial and everything else. So they celebrate it more than anybody else, I think now. But originally, it is an Irish festival. Oh, wonderful. Good story. Oh, Halloween. I'm not going to forget that now. Yes. Eve. Halloween. Halloween. Eve, like an old word for evening. Eve. Yeah, super. That's good. That's one of the words, actually, that people often forget, isn't it? The Eve, right? So moving on, when you've got Christmas Eve, right? And then you've got Christmas Day. So the Eve actually means, as you said, Rebecca, it's the day before or the evening before, the day before the actual day. So you've got Christmas Eve, which is the 24th. And then New Year's Eve, which is the 31st of December. Speaking of which, there's a problem here with the Christmas names, right? For the Christmas holidays with, for example, Christmas Day. So that's the 25th. And the 26th in England is called Boxing Day, which has got nothing to do with boxing, by the way. Did we do that in our Christmas? I think we did it in the Christmas quiz. Well, yeah, it's basically when the, for example, the rich families that had their castles and big fine homes, they had their servants. And on this day, it's when they celebrated Christmas for their servants. And they gave their servants boxes with money in and food and oranges. Yeah, that kind of thing. And then they opened them up. Yeah, we can all picture somebody. Unboxing, yeah. And I think I heard in the USA, in America, it's not a bank holiday. It's like the 26th of December. I'm not sure. I think maybe not. See, in Ireland, it's St. Stephen's Day. It's not actually Boxing Day. They have St. Stephen's Day, but it is a holiday, I think. But I always think Zweiter Weihnachtstag is a little bit languish, you know? Yeah. Could we not? Yeah, we're not very creative. We could have created something better than the second Christmas day, you know? But that's what sometimes people say. They say the second Christmas day. I said, no, no, it's actually Christmas day. We call it Christmas day. Yeah, but the German, I think we need a new word for that. Yeah, let's come up with something. You can come up with something. The second Christmas day, the day we go to the other family. That's always the, you know. Well, I heard in a certain part of Germany, there's this tradition with Stefanus Steinigen. Now, maybe some people who are from this area will probably know what I'm talking about. But it's where you basically, from the Stefanus, I don't know if it's linked up with the Irish. St. Stephen, yeah. It is St. Stephen's Day, so. Yeah, so I don't know if it's somehow linked in the history. But apparently, this is the day when in this, it's actually sort of around the Munster area where I used to live. And the people go into the bars, they have their drinks. And it's something where you have a stone in your pocket. And if you don't have a stone in your pocket or something, you have to buy a round for everyone in the pub or something. It's a drinking game. I don't, this is what people tell me. The Steinigen sounds very aggressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe people were just joking me and it's not true. But maybe if there are people from that area and it is true, then. Please comment. You're wondering now, Dave, if someone was making fun of you and they, well, let's tell the English guy. He doesn't have a stone in his pocket. He's got to buy a round. Now, the more I think about it and the more I say, it sounds like they were taking the, anyway, teasing me. Maybe, teasing you, potentially. But who knows? We'll look that up. But that brings us into the new year, right? Right. New Year's Day. On New Year's Day, again, because it's a day. And the next one is interesting, I think, for listeners. So if that's not very well known, Epiphany. Epiphany. Epiphany. Again, not really celebrated in the UK, is it? We don't really do that. Spain, you have that. It's a big day in Spain and in Germany. It's sort of in the sort of south of Germany, is it? Or do you also have that? Isn't it Catholic? Not necessarily. Yeah, not necessarily a public. I think it is a Catholic celebration, isn't it? I think generally. Yeah. Okay. And then we're back into the fifth season. Women's Carnival Day. Oh, I like that. Being special in Germany is often difficult to find a translation. That's a star here in the document you will find in the show notes. Yeah, Women's Carnival Day. And Carnival brings us all the way back to Pancake Day, which in the UK, obviously, Faschingsdienstag, we have Pancake. You've got Your Rosenmontag. We don't really have that. And then we're back to Pancake Day. And that's the beginning of Lent. So we've come full circle. Absolutely. It's good to have a kind of list and days where you can rely on, isn't it? Otherwise, we would be lost, as you said. No bank holidays for our dear. No free days. Thinking of it now. So our golden nugget today is something. It's an ending. Not everybody knows when I talk about it. It's ISH ending. If you can talk about things and people and even times, and you mean something like towards this direction. So somebody can be, weather can be coldish. So you're not saying it's really cold. It's kind of cold, coldish. So he's in his kind of 20-ish. You're guessing. You don't exactly know. Is he 20? Is he 30? You can meet at 5-ish, 3-ish, kind of around a certain hour. So when did you get home last night? And maybe your husband might say around 11-ish. So that means he can't really remember. He has no clue when he came home. And yeah, it's a nice ending. Something interesting. As I said, not everybody has heard of this. And this is our special feature for today. Okay. So next time, thank you for the golden nugget, Bigot. I like ISH. I think ISH is a very, it's a nice, it's, I mean, it is slang, but it's so common. I mean, we really, we use it a lot. Is it warm? Well, it's warm-ish. Is it, what colour is your couch? Well, it's a green-ish colour. Green-ish, yeah. I think it's green-ish. Any, any, any. It doesn't matter, yeah. I think, yeah, any adjective. How many beers did you have last night? Ah, 5-ish. 5-ish. Well, it could be 15, 25. Yeah, exactly. So next time we're going to publish a very special episode. This is because there will be our first guest on the show. And this will be Ellen Jovin, the grammar table lady from New York, together with her husband, Brian Johnson. And this is so exciting. And it was a very exciting recording for me, especially because I, I'm a big fan of what Ellen does. As I said, she's a grammar table lady. She put up her folding table on the streets, in the streets of America, all of the US states. And she answered questions to whoever passed by and had a question about English grammar. So very exciting project. She wrote a book about it. And now a film has come out because her husband, Brand, videoed her sitting there answering questions. And there is a full film now available in the states. And we were, we are going to talk about this and about the whole thing with Ellen and Brand in our next episode. So hopefully you'll be pressing play again, and we'll be listening to this very exciting episode. Bye for now. And thanks for listening to us today. So would you like to meet us, the three English experts? We are really excited to say we are offering a live two-day workshop in Cologne in September. It's going to be fantastic. We're so excited about this. You have the opportunity to meet us, to spend three hours with Dave learning communication techniques, three hours with Birgit working on your grammar, and finally three hours with me working on your mindset and your motivation. It's the perfect reboot, refresh for your English. And it's going to be insightful. It's going to be interactive, and it's going to be lots and lots of fun. So if you're interested, head over to our special website. That's threeenglishexpertsworkshop.com, threeenglishexpertsworkshop.com. And places are limited. We're only taking a limited number of people to make sure the groups are small. And so head over there now. We do have an early bird offer. So if you book early, you get a special price and you get lots of nice bonus stuff on top of the price discount. So get going, get over to that website. And we would so love to meet everybody. We are just so excited about this. So hopefully see you there.